Bruce Sterling - Heavy Weather

They drove maybe ten kilometers, a lurching, awful trip, pausing half a dozen times to work around or smash their way over downed trees. Then Leo drove the vehicle down a wet concrete slope into an underground garage. A steel garage door slid shut behind them like an airlock, and the torrent of noisy wind ceased quite suddenly, and fluorescents flicked on.

They were in a storm shelter.

A privately owned shelter, but it was a big place. They took stairs down from the garage. A nice place, a regular underground mansion by the look of it. Thick carpeting underfoot, and oil paintings on the walls, and designer lighting and a big superconductive someplace to keep all those lights burning. Outside, hell was raging, but they bad just sealed themselves in a big money-lined Oklahoma bank vault.

Leo stepped into a small tiled room with a compost toilet, and opened a pair of overhead cabinet doors, and offered her a thick canary-yellow toweL As if in afterthought, he pulled a pair of foam plugs from his ears, then ran one hand through his disordered hair. "Well, Juanita," he told her, smiling at her. "Janey. Well met at last, Jane!"

Jane rubbed at her hair and face. Filthy. And her nose was still bleeding a little. It seemed a real shame to put blood on such a nice thick dry towel. "How'd you find me, out there?"

"I heard your distress call! I scarcely dared to leave the shelter, but there came a break in the weather, and you were close to the shelter, and well"-Leo smiled-"here we are, both safe and sound, so the risk was well worth it."

"My brother's still out there."

"Yes"-Leo nodded-"I did overhear that. A shame your brother-Alex, isn't it?-didn't have the wisdom to stay with the vehicle. When it dies down, maybe we can make a try to find young Alex. All right?"

"Why not rescue him right now?"

"Jane, I'm no meteorologist, but I can read a SESAME report. All hell is breaking loose out there. I'm very sorry, but I won't comb a patch of woods far a missing boy while the landscape swarms with tornadoes. You and I were lucky to get back here alive."

"I'll go alone, I can drive that thing."

"Jane, don't be troublesome. I don't own that vehicle."

"Who owns it, then?"

"The group owns it. I'm not here all alone, you know. I have my friends! Friends who strongly disapproved of my leaving this shelter in the first place. Would you think this through a bit, please? Consider this from my perspective."

Jane fell silent. Then she couldn't restrain herself. "My brother's life is at stake!"

"So is my brother's," Leo said sternly. "Do you know how many people have died in this horror already? It's already leveled five towns, and the F-6 is headed right for Oklahoma City! Tens of thousands of people are going to die, not just one person that you happen to know! It's a holocaust out there, and I don't propose to join in it! Get a grip on yourself!" He opened a tall closet. "Look, here's a bathrobe. Get out of that wet paper, Jane, and try to compose yourself. You're in a storm cellar now, and that's where sane people are supposed to be, during a storm. We're going to~y here now! We won't be leaving again."

He shut the ck~&r and left her alone in the bathroom. Alone again, she began shaking violently. She glanced at herself in the mirror. The sight of her own face sent a chill through her. She looked terrifying: a madwoman, a bloodied gorgon.

She tried the faucet; a thin trickle of ill-smelling water emerged. Very chlorinated. If you were rich in Oklahoma, you could drill a big hole in the ground and put a mansion inside it, but that still wouldn't get you decent water. She stoppered the sink and rinsed her face, quickly. Then she put a cupped handful of water through her hair. Something like a kilo of rust-colored Oklahoma dirt dripped out of her hair and into the sink. And her paper suit was smeared with wet dust.

She stepped out of the paper suit, and put it into the sink and ran a little water over it, and washed her hands and wrists. Then she pulled the suit out again and wiped it with the towel, and the paper suit was pretty darn clean. It dried out in no time. Good old paper. She stepped back into it and zipped it up.

She -opened the bathroom door again. There were distant voices down a sloping corridor. Jane tromped down the corridor in her trail boots. "Leo?"

"Yes?" He handed her a mug of something hot. Café con leche. It was very good. And very welcome.

"Leo, what on earth are you doing in this place?"

"Interesting question," Leo admitted. "It's no accident, of course."

"I thought not, somehow."

"Even the blackest cloud has a chrome lining," Leo offered, with a tentative smile. He led her into an arched, bombproof den. There was a sitting area with low, flowing, leather couches in a conversation pit. The walls were stuccoed ceramic and the roof was a thick blastproof stuccoed ceramic dome, like the inside of a roe's egg. A brass chandelier hung on a chain from the top of the dome. The chandelier swayed a little, gently.

There was a media center with a pair of silent televisions on, and an old rosewood liquor cabinet, and a scattering of brass-and-leather hassocks of brown-and-white furred brindled cowhide. There were a pair of Remington bronzes of mustached cowpokes on horseback doing unlikely horse-breaker things, and a pair of awesome octagon-barreled frontier rifles were mounted on the wail.

And there were eight strangers in the shelter, counting Leo. Two women, six men. Two of the men were playing with an onyx Mexican chess set, off at the far end of the conversation pit. Another was gently manipulating a squealing broadband scanner hooked to an antenna feed. The other four were playing some desultory card game on a coffee table, pinochle or poker maybe, and munching from a red lacquered tray of microwaved hors d'oeuvres.

"Well, here she is," Leo announced. "Everyone, this is Jane Unger."

They looked up, mildly curious. No one said much. Jane sipped her warm coffee, holding the mug with both hands.

"Forgive me if I don't make introductions," Leo said.

"You know what would be a really good idea, Leo?" said one of the chess players, mildly, looking over his rimless glasses. "It would be a really good idea if you put Ms. Unger back outside."

"All in good time," Leo said. He turned to the silent televisions. "Oh dear, just look at that havoc." He said it in a voice so flat and numbed that Jane was taken aback. She set her coffee mug down. Leo looked at her. She picked the mug back up.

"It's pretty much leveled El Reno," remarked the other chess player, cheerfully. "Pretty danm good coverage too."

"Have they structure-hit that broadcast tower outside Woodward yet?" Leo said.

"Yeah. It came down three minutes ago. A good hit, Leo. Real solid hit. Professional."

"That's great," Leo said. "That's splendid. So, Jane. What would you like? A few spring rolls with hot mustard? You do like Thai food, don't you? I think we have some Thai in the freezer." He took her elbow and led her to the open kitchenette.

Jane pulled her arm free. "What the hell are you doing?"

Leo smiled. "Short explanatün, or long explanation?"

"Short. And hurry up."

"Well," said Leo, "shortly, my friends and I are very interested in dead spots. This is a big dead spot, and that's why we're here. We've put ourselves here quite deliberately, just like you and your Troupe did. Because we knew that this area would be the epicenter of damage from my brother's F-6."

"Leo, I gotta hand it to that brother of yours!" called out the second chess player, with what sounded like real gratitude. "Personally, I had the gravest doubts about any so-called F-6 tornado, it seemed like a real reach, a real nutcase long shot, but Leo, I admit it now." The chess player straightened up from his board, lifting one finger. "Your brother has really delivered. I mean, just look at that coverage!" He pointed briskly at the television. "This disaster is world-class!"